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6
IMMUNIZATION.
As the incidence of poliomyelitis was low there was no interruption
of any scheme and good progress was made.
As your Medical Officer of Health I am responsible for this aspect
of preventive medicine but for the sake of convenience the work is
mainly carried out at Clinics administered by the County Council.
Prevention of Diphtheria.
At the request of the Chief Medical Officer, Ministry of Health,
great efforts have been made during recent years to get as many as
75% of infants under 1 year immunized against diphtheria. This
objective has now been achieved and I think that this district is
amongst the first to do so.
If the diphtheria prophylactic is used cobined with Whooping
Cough vaccine it is effective against both diseases when commenced
as early as 3 months of age. The combined prophylactic is popular
with parents as the numbers of injections is thereby reduced and early
protection is made possible.
Prevention of Whooping Cough.
The proportion of infants protected against Whooping Cough is
now as high as for diphtheria. The vaccine does not give complete
protection to all those who receive it, but when Whooping Cough
does occur in an inoculated child it is a mild illness. Early protection
is most important as the disease is much more fatal to infants than to
older children.
Prevention of Smallpox.
The policy of vaccinating against small pox after immunization
against diphtheria (and Whooping Cough) has been continued with
great success. Infants suffer so little inconvenience from the first
course of injections that mothers present them for Smallpox vaccina'
tion with increasing regularity.
The proportion of babies vaccinated fell to a low level when the
National Health Service Act was introduced but in Richmond it has
been rising steadily and reached 64.7% in 1956.